(ANS – Yaoundé) – Fr Natalino Parodi, a Salesian missionary in Cameroon, comes from a family of bakers. So one could have expected him to follow in the family tradition; but the Lord had different plans for him: he called him to hand out the Eucharist Bread.

“My destiny was laid out: my father was a baker, his father too… So what did life hold in store for me? A brilliant, unstoppable career in the bread-making ‘capital market’?” Fr Parodi asks with a touch of humour. “My father had already introduced me to the subtle tricks of the trade and sent me to the trade fair in Milan every year”.

From his work experience at home, Fr Parodi learned a lot. In the fist instance the dignity of work, even when it is hard work which happens while everyone else is sleeping; then the importance of giving of one's best to others: “Already in those days there were legitimate chemical processes on the market, battery-run fridges… But my father always gave the bread a special taste and he had always excluded use of the new-fangled things”.

Bread distribution is also different from selling other kinds of goods, and brings with it a different relationship from the one between the seller and the buyer. Fr Parodi continues: “This kind of work is full of meaning and has a notable social impact… Not every culture makes bread from wheat, but all cultures have a staple food, something they can carry in a bag, sack or basket… And when you went to the shop to buy bread, especially in the afternoon, you could always have a chat… How often I saw my mother handling problems, illness, the physical pains of her clients!”.

Fr Natalino, nevertheless, was called to distribute another kind of Bread: “Along the way I understood that ‘man does not live from bread alone, but from every word that comes from God’. He is often tempted to stay with bread, social work, development, but this is not the real aim. Christ is the true Bread of Life and if we can pass this on, even development takes another shape because it is the Spirit that binds us together”.

Fr Parodi now has daily experience of this Eucharistic Bread in the mission at Yaoundé, in Cameroon: “We only reach the surface without the Eucharist and a praisworthy philanthropy. We are all hungry for life and meaning. Where we are in Africa, religious meaning is on the wane in many churches. The result? Young people take their distance and if there are problems they have recourse to the witchdoctor once more who does nothing except increase anxiety, fear and division. Instead whoever share Bread himself becomes  ‘bread broken for others’ and barriers of selfishness are overcome. This is the foundation not only for service, volunteer work, but charity of love”.

Today in western society the baker is almost no longer visible, as is happening with God. “But He has not disappeared”, Fr Parodi concludes. “He, the Bread of Life, always wants to give himself to us, see us return to Him and taste and smell the fragrance of the Bread that has just come from the oven”.

Published 27/03/2013